The Everglades Syndrome

In 1855 the Internal Improvement Fund was created by the Florida State legislative branch to drain swamps through the use of canals, levees, and dikes, in order to open land to farming. This was the beginning of one of the largest and most underappreciated terraforming projects in modern American history - second only to the damming of the Colorado River system. Four million people live in areas of South Florida that would be largely uninhabitable without the drainage offered by emptying what locals affectionately call the swamp. But did the Army Corps of Engineers who built the canals and levees understand the far reaching the effects of such a project would be? Do we understand even how those projects are affecting the environment now? South Florida's ongoing problems demonstrate that attempting to change the environment on a large scale is something that should only be undertaken with intensive thought and in the most dire of circumstances.